How To Set The Right Goal: 7 Goal Setting Mistakes To Avoid

Life is all about moving forward with our goals and achieving more in our lives. Wanting to better ourselves brings aspirations, dreams and takes us down paths to accomplishment.

Discovering what we want to do in life can be an exciting prospect and we naturally become eager to start setting our goals and planning on how we can achieve them. But there are some fundamental mistakes that many people make when setting goals and, if we’re not aware of these, they can bring a lot of challenges, frustrations and disappointments.

Here are 7 goal setting mistakes to be aware of:

1. Too Narrow In Our Thinking

For some of us, when setting goals, we focus a lot on what we want rather than why we want it. Thinking in this way limits our imagination and keeps us from realising what we really want. For example, if you set your sights on a particular job for purely the purpose of power, influence over others or the ability to effect changes then you are losing sight of the position itself and what it can bring to you personally. Focusing on the growth aspect of your goals will allow more flexibility in the adjustment of them. In other words, you are putting less emphasis on a specific, narrowed aspect of the job and cultivating the positive reasons why the job will be beneficial to you and your growth.

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2. Pursuing Extrinsic Instead Of Intrinsic Goals

This is linked to our narrowed thoughts. One of the biggest goal setting mistakes we make is going after goals that are ultimately governed by external influences rather than from within. Sometimes a goal can be about validation rather than our true happiness and this usually points to our need to feed deep-rooted issues rather than for the good of ourselves.

Any goal that is focused on social status, the aim of getting rich or recognition will take away your true purpose and enjoyment of the end goal. Make sure your goal is intrinsically motivated and solely for the satisfaction of your own personal development.

3. Believing Our Goal Will Bring Us Happiness

I know what you’re thinking – of course my goal will make me happy! The problem with goals, as discussed before, can be our reasons behind them. Sometimes we go after goals believing that we’ll achieve happiness once we accomplish them and while this can be true, it really depends on whether or not you’re pinning all your happiness on your goal.

It’s a big myth that thinking our goal will be what brings us ultimate happiness. While this can be true, it is usually short lived if we’re not fundamentally happy in the first place. We need to achieve happiness within and not pin it all on our goals. In other words, make sure your goal will make you happier not to achieve happiness in itself.

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4. Setting Too Many Goals

Understanding that we have limitations is important and the danger with too many goals is that it can lead to quantity rather than quality. Focusing on one goal or a selection of quality goals is much more manageable and meaningful than going after too many. It’s important to understand that quality goals are usually ones that develop ourselves and move us forward in a positive way while quantity goals are more focused on quick, meaningless achievements that don’t necessarily fulfil our needs and have little impact.

5. Setting Goals Without Strategies And The Correct Mindset

Setting goals can help us get what we want but to achieve the goals we need to have a good strategy in place as well as a good mindset. A positive and successful mindset is the crux of any good goal-setting strategy. After all, our actions rely heavily on our perspective and ways of looking at the world.

A good strategy will account for any pitfalls or potential challenges that come your way. These can easily trip you up and cause you to give up altogether so it’s important to plan thoroughly and create small and achievable steps.

6. Setting Goals Too Low

When we have limited beliefs surrounding our goals, we can have a tendency to set our goals too low. This is usually because we underestimate our abilities or resources either because of past experience or limited information. If you think of a goal and don’t truly believe you can achieve it, then the tendency is to lower your standards. This is tempting but won’t get you what you truly want. Make sure that you realise all your resources and work on your self-esteem to recognise your true potential.

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7. Unrealistic Expectations

One of the main goal setting mistakes we make is creating unrealistic expectations. This doesn’t means biting off more than we can chew in terms of our abilities but the way in which we set our goals. For example, not giving yourself enough time to achieve your goal can lead to a sense of failure and can make you give up altogether. Be kind to yourself, eliminate unneeded pressure and give yourself realistic time limits – account for any challenges along the way. Just because a goal takes a year doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Try not to fall into the trap of impatience when it comes to your goals as it only leads to goals that ultimately can’t be achieved.

How to Communicate Effectively in Any Relationship

For all our social media bravado, we live in a society where communication is seen less as an art, and more as a perfunctory exercise. We spend so much time with people, yet we struggle with how to meaningfully communicate.

If you believe you have mastered effective communication, scan the list below and see whether you can see yourself in any of the examples:

Example 1

You are uncomfortable with a person’s actions or comments, and rather than telling the individual immediately, you sidestep the issue and attempt to move on as though the offending behavior or comment never happened.

You move on with the relationship and develop a pattern of not addressing challenging situations. Before long, the person with whom you are in relationship will say or do something that pushes you over the top and predictably, you explode or withdraw completely from the relationship.

In this example, hard-to-speak truths become never- expressed truths that turn into resentment and anger.

Example 2

You communicate from the head and without emotion. While what you communicate makes perfect sense to you, it comes across as cold because it lacks emotion.

People do not understand what motivates you to say what you say, and without sharing your feelings and emotions, others experience you as rude, cold or aggressive.

You will know this is a problem if people shy away from you, ignore your contributions in meetings or tell you your words hurt. You can also know you struggle in this area if you find yourself constantly apologizing for things you have said.

Example 3

You have an issue with one person, but you communicate your problem to an entirely different person.

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The person in whom you confide lacks the authority to resolve the matter troubling you, and while you have vented and expressed frustration, the underlying challenge is unresolved.

Example 4

You grew up in a family with destructive communication habits and those habits play out in your current relationships.

Because you have never stopped to ask why you communicate the way you do and whether your communication style still works, you may lack understanding of how your words impact others and how to implement positive change.

If you find yourself in any of the situations described above, this article is for you.

Communication can build or decimate worlds and it is important we get it right. Regardless of your professional aspirations or personal goals, you can improve your communication skills if you:

Understand your own communication style

Tailor your style depending on the needs of the audience

Communicate with precision and care

Be mindful of your delivery, timing and messenger

1. Understand Your Communication Style

To communicate effectively, you must understand the communication legacy passed down from our parents, grandparents or caregivers. Each of us grew up with spoken and unspoken rules about communication.

In some families, direct communication is practiced and honored. In other families, family members are encouraged to shy away from difficult conversations. Some families appreciate open and frank dialogue and others do not. Other families practice silence about substantive matters, that is, they seldom or rarely broach difficult conversations at all.

Before you can appreciate the nuance required in communication, it helps to know the familial patterns you grew up with.

2. Learn Others Communication Styles

Communicating effectively requires you to take a step back, assess the intended recipient of your communication and think through how the individual prefers to be communicated with. Once you know this, you can tailor your message in a way that increases the likelihood of being heard. This also prevents you from assuming the way you communicate with one group is appropriate or right for all groups or people.

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If you are unsure how to determine the styles of the groups or persons with whom you are interacting, you can always ask them:

“How do you prefer to receive information?”

This approach requires listening, both to what the individuals say as well as what is unspoken. Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson noted that the best communicators are also great listeners.

To communicate effectively from relationship to relationship and situation to situation, you must understand the communication needs of others.

3. Exercise Precision and Care

A recent engagement underscored for me the importance of exercising care when communicating.

On a recent trip to Ohio, I decided to meet up with an old friend to go for a walk. As we strolled through the soccer park, my friend gently announced that he had something to talk about, he was upset with me. His introduction to the problem allowed me to mentally shift gears and prepare for the conversation.

Shortly after introducing the shift in conversation, my friend asked me why I didn’t invite him to the launch party for my business. He lives in Ohio and I live in the D.C. area.

I explained that the event snuck up on me, and I only started planning the invite list three weeks before the event. Due to the last-minute nature of the gathering, I opted to invite people in the DMV area versus my friends from outside the area – I didn’t want to be disrespectful by asking them to travel on such short notice.

I also noted that I didn’t want to be disappointed if he and others declined to come to the event. So I played it safe in terms of inviting people who were local.

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In the moment, I felt the conversation went very well. I also checked in with my friend a few days after our walk, affirmed my appreciation for his willingness to communicate his upset and our ability to work through it.

The way this conversation unfolded exemplified effective communication. My friend approached me with grace and vulnerability. He approached me with a level of curiosity that didn’t put me on my heels — I was able to really listen to what he was saying, apologize for how my decision impacted him and vow that going forward, I would always ask rather than making decisions for him and others.

Our relationship is intact, and I now have information that will help me become a better friend to him and others.

4. Be Mindful of Delivery, Timing and Messenger

Communicating effectively also requires thinking through the delivery of the message one intends to communicate as well as the appropriate time for the discussion.

In an Entrepreneur.com column, VIP Contributor Deep Patel, noted that persons interested in communicating well need to master the art of timing. Patel noted,[1]

“Great comedians, like all great communicators, are able to feel out their audience to determine when to move on to a new topic or when to reiterate an idea.”

Communicating effectively also requires thoughtfulness about the messenger. A person prone to dramatic, angry outbursts should never be called upon to deliver constructive feedback, especially to people whom they do not know. The immediate aftermath of a mass shooting is not the ideal time to talk about the importance of the Second Amendment rights.

Like everyone else, I must work to ensure my communication is layered with precision and care.

It requires precision because words must be carefully tailored to the person with whom you are speaking.

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It requires intentionality because before one communicates, one should think about the audience and what the audience needs in order to hear your message the way you intended it to be communicated.

It requires active listening which is about hearing verbal and nonverbal messages.

Even though we may be right in what we say, how we say it could derail the impact of the message and the other parties’ ability to hear the message.

Communicating with care is also about saying things that the people in our life need to hear and doing so with love.

The Bottom Line

When I left the meeting with my dear friend, I wondered if I was replicating or modeling this level of openness and transparency in the rest of my relationships.

I was intrigued and appreciative. He’d clearly thought about what he wanted to say to me, picked the appropriate time to share his feedback and then delivered it with care. He hit the ball out of the park and I’m hopeful we all do the same.